EIGHTIES LETTERS AND FAN DIARY

18: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1985

Caught the 3.30pm coach back to London and suffered an interminable five hour
journey in a bus at oven temperature while enduring the 'in-flight' movie
EARTHQUAKE.

When I got home I counted TAFF ballots, tabulated them, then counted signatures on
the Pickersgill Petition.

Wednesday 2nd January

As arranged, Avedon phoned me around 11.20pm and we exchanged voting figures. The
Nielsen Haydens won on the first ballot and, impartial administrator or not, I
breathed a deep sigh of relief at not having to deal with the midwestern cabal.

Thursday 3rd January - One Tun night

Everybody at the Tun was delighted with the result. Some pressed drink on
me and congratulated me. I don't know why, since I hadn't campaigned for P&TNH,
but maybe they just sensed my relief.

Typical One Tun crowd, 1985

Later, Avedon rang again to tell me Patrick was already working up a provisional
draft of a new TAFF ballot. That boy sure doesn't waste any time!

Friday 4th January

FILE 770 #50 turned up in the mail today, and was largely devoted to the Taff Wars.
Editor Mike Glyer more-or-less took the line I'd have hoped he would but was very
unhappy about the Pickersgill Petition and commented on the adverse effect a
British termination of TAFF could have on the Britain in '87 Worldcon bid. This
is the first time anyone had publicly linked the two, and now I'm worried
about the possible consequences of my letter to Avedon of 13 Dec 84.

4th January 1985 - letter to Mike Glyer

You wonder, on the back page, what popularity the Pickersgill Petition would have,
and it turned out to be quite a lot. The number of people who signed it was 120, 77
of them being also TAFF voters who comprised some 57 per cent of those who voted in
TAFF over here this time. This put me, as you pointed out, in something of an awkward
position. Since I was these people's representative, and since they had made their
disquiet so clear, I had to respond in some way and so, after much agonising and a
fair bit of consultation with members of some of Britain's biggest fan groups (my
phone bill for this quarter is going to be astronomical) I sent Avedon my official
letter of 13th December (and copied it to you). It laid out the reasons for the action
I felt I had to take, how We had reached this state of affairs (largely as a result of
British reaction to Jackie's 'Martha Beck for TAFF' flyers), and why I felt I had no
choice but to refuse to co-operate with a future administration run by Beck or her
campaign managers. I very carefully made no reference at all to Beck as trip-taker
since, even though untruths were being used to whip up support for her (see the LoC
on UNCLE DICK'S that I copied to you two days back), most of those who actually voted
for her did so in good faith and, as you point out, I have no right to "...pass
judgement on Martha Beck as a fan..." . As I saw it all that Martha and most of those
who voted for her wanted was for her to take the trip so a possible way out was, for
this time only, to split the trip and administration with the latter going to someone
acceptable to all parties. This doubtless wouldn't have pleased Martha's campaign
managers but it might well have been the only way TAFF could have continued in
anything like it's present form and with the active participation of British fandom.
Feelings were running pretty high over here - again, see my letter of 13th Dec - and
this seemed to me the absolute minimum action I could have taken. In their
substitution of regional chauvinism for internationalism and their list of names to
use to rubber-stamp ballots the flyers offended a lot of people over here (I myself
witnessed people at the One Tun who had originally refused to sign the petition falling
over themselves to do so after reading the flyers) and in the process totally destroyed
any chance of working with their authors. Something else I didn't mention in that letter
- mainly because I preferred not to think about it unless it became necessary - was the
call on that petition concerning UK TAFF funds. I honestly don't know what I would have
done had it come to the crunch but fortunately it didn't, so now I'll never know.

p.s. Judith Hanna just phoned. She usually organises the monthly BSFA meeting held in
London in the downstairs room of a pub called The King of Diamonds but now, she informs
me, we've been banned from using it!

Saturday 5th January

Patrick phoned today and we discussed possible amendments to the TAFF rules. I agreed
to send him my thoughts.

Sunday 6th January

Since it had snowed last night and was bloody cold I put the duvet on my bed for
the first time this winter.

6th January 1985 - letter to Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Have given a lot of thought to our phone conversation of last night and reached the
conclusion that a fixed 25% minimum of the total vote in the host country is the best
course to take. I thought about your idea of a sliding percentage based on the number
of TAFF candidates in a given race and realised its main flaw. This comes down to the
fact that a group, while only intending to do any serious campaigning for one individual,
could put up a number of other candidates as well solely to bring the percentage down to
a point where they could raise the few overseas votes they'd then require. Your original
objection to a figure of 25% where there are more than three people running doesn't hold
up because, as experience has shown, there's usually a clear favourite and the race is
rarely more than a two-horse affair in practice. Have a run through the results of the
last ten races or so and see if a 25% rule would have altered the result in any of them
(other than in those cases we're setting this up to avoid a repetition of, of course). No,
25% seems to be the figure to go for.

When it come to the removal of the 'write-in' vote you can, as I've said, say that I
insisted on this since I don't mind being the villain of the piece and I've always thought
it made a mockery of the nominating procedure, anyway. We can either announce this at
some point or just amend the ballot to read: "...'write-in' candidates are no longer
permitted...", whichever suits you best.

Just had a call from D West who, while obviously pleased at the result, was grumbling about
how his eagerly-awaited article (by me, at any rate) was written on the basis of a Beck win
and how he's now going to have to re-jig it substantially. He reports that he's "having great
fun" demolishing Dave Locke in particular and has asked if anyone has copies of photos of
Jackie Causgrove and Rusty Hevelin which he could have as a knowledge of what someone looks
like helps him to make his barbs all the sharper.

Monday 7th January

Saw GHOSTBUSTERS at the Odeon Leicester Square, which I enjoyed a lot.

There was a letter from Skel waiting for me when I got in, which I replied to at
some length. I was somewhat perturbed he still thought UK opposition to the
Beck campaign was mainly directed at Beck herself rather than at the campaign waged
on her behalf. I can't have been as clear during our long phone conversation as I'd
hoped. And I wonder what this 'Open Letter to Rob Hansen' he and others have
mentioned actually is. No one's seen fit to send me a copy.

Wednesday 9th January - North London pool night

Letter from Glicksohn, who was very concerned at my letter to Avedon of 13 Dec 84
and advises me to retract it. In retrospect, it might be politic to retract the
demands therein, if only to make things easier for moderate US fan opinion.

In the evening Roger Weddall turned up for the pool, to the great astonishment
of Malcolm Edwards who thought he'd already returned to Australia.

Friday 11th January

Travelled over to Welling to pick up some reams of duplicator paper from Vince Clarke
and did so by rail from Blackfriars station. I get off at Blackfriars Underground
every day for work, but this was the first time I'd been on the mainline station above it.

14th January 1985 - letter to Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I was a little freaked by Mike Glyer's reaction to the Pickersgill Petition in
the last FILE 770 after he'd spent the rest of the issue more or less supporting
what we regard as the correct position on all the recent brouhaha. If, as this
seems to indicate, there might be a backlash from moderate US fans then the
retraction of that particular part of my letter saying we'd refuse to recognize a
Beck administration seems a good idea. It costs me nothing to do it (I've never
been cursed with a macho pride about sticking to my guns) and should make it easier
for anyone who wants to side with UK fans in the event of any big blow-up over this
to do so. Because make no mistake about it, things over here were every bit as serious
as my letter to Glicksohn makes out, and that we were prepared to go as far as we
almost did shows how close the Causgrove/Locke campaign came to flushing away 30+
years of goodwill and maybe ending TAFF itself.

With regards to your trip I'll book you into the Leeds Dragonara hotel for three
nights from Friday 5th April to Monday 8th April. There will be some people there
on the Thursday night but since that's the first Thursday of the month and thus the
night of the One Tun I figure you'll want to attend that instead, particularly as
it's the only one that falls within the period you said you'd be over here. Let me
know your flight number when you know it yourself, and the time, and I'll arrange
to be there to meet you when you get in. I'm looking forward to seeing you both
again and hope to be rather more alert than I was in New York last summer (when it
felt like my brain was wrapped in cotton wool most of the time).

17th January 1985 - letter to Avedon Carol

It's probably just as well you're not here with me at 9A at the moment because we're
currently suffering temperatures in the UK that are the lowest we've seen in almost
thirty years and, try as I might, I'm finding it very difficult to get warm - and if
I'm feeling bloody cold then you'd find it unendurable. I've got both bars of the
electric fire going, and the fan-heater (a very aptly-named device) and I'm still cold.
The way I figure it these electrical heaters just aren't man-enough for the job (to use
a quaint old expression) and come the weekend I intend to look seriously at the
possibility of getting in a Calor gas heater. Since the flat has no gas supply a Calor
gas heater (one that runs from a gas bottle) is the only other way of heating it up
and one I hope will work since the only time I've really been warm in the past week is
while I was in work. Then again maybe I'll just follow your suggestion of retiring to
the bedroom for the winter since, as you pointed out, the size difference in the two
rooms is such that what can't adequately warm the lounge may be just peachy in there.

Friday 18th January

It felt odd being at the One Tun on a non-Tun night. The original idea was that we'd
gather there and decide on a new venue for the BSFA meetings, but that didn't happen.
Instead we had a big piss-up.

19th January 1985 - letter to Avedon Carol

...and suddenly there it was - two days later! When last I put finger to typewriter-key
the snow lay round about deep, and crisp, and even, but since then the temperature has
risen and it's currently a sweltering 2 degrees in the capital. End of weather report.

Went to the One Tun last night, a very strange thing to do since it's not the first
Thursday but rather the third Friday of the month. As Judith Hanna may have already informed
you, we've been told we can no longer hold the monthly BSFA meetings at the King of Diamonds
because the management thought our meetings were more to do with CND than with SF. Quite
why they should've thought this is a puzzlement. I mean, the November meeting was our
Christmas party, October was me shanghaied into giving an impromptu talk on my experiences
in darkest America, and those prior to that I recall only hazily but am reasonably certain
were not in any way devoted to anti-nuclear matters. Near as I can tell all they can have
taken umbrage at are the badges worn by various people or by such matters being discussed
in private conversation. Whatever, it's still weird to find we've effectively been barred
on political grounds.

Avedon & Lucy during 1984 visit

Anyway, all this aside, while I was there various people congratulated me on our forthcoming
nuptials, which surprised the hell out of me since I've told no one other than my parents.
Judith blurted it out in front of everyone but prior to that Phil Palmer told me about this letter
he'd received from Lucy who's apparently putting her proposed trip to these shores back a
month or two to that she "...can be a bridesmaid...”. This thing, as you pointed out, is
growing. It occurs to me that what with people like Lucy and your brother and his wife
wanting to come over (and maybe Ted as well, if he's serious, which would be cool) we'd
better set a date soon to that they can make their arrangements. And if they're coming all
that way it would be, nice if the weather allowed them to make a proper holiday of it which
makes some time around mid-May a pretty good time to do it. Sound OK to you?

Not being all that close to Joe & Judith I wasn't actually invited to their wedding
(nor did I expect to be) so I can't really comment on your suggestion that we take a leaf
out of their book in some way. My own parents and my brother and sister want to be present
but I've told them no other relatives (I hate those big family gatherings where cousins and
uncles and aunts you don't see from one year's end to the next get together to coo over
whoever is doing it on that particular occasion - I am totally at odds with your mother in
this regard). Other than the actual ceremony (which has to be held in the registry office
that serves the district where I'm registered to vote) there's some sort of party afterwards
of course, and while I want to keep numbers down for this, even a reasonable minimum of people I
really can't leave out comes to quite a few. Must work up a list at some point and see if
you agree.

Another day has passed since I wrote the above and it's now Sunday which means I shortly have
to have a bath prior to heading over to Ealing for Friends In Space (oh, the mad social whirl
of London fandom!). Before doing so I'll also try to type up the second episode of my trip
report (in existence as a hand-written draft) to that I can give it to Pam Wells (who'll be
running it in the next NUTZ, due out early in Feb. One way or another I'm determined to get a
complete report out.

Speaking of TAFF (which I'm heartily sick of but still can't avoid) I've included copies of
various bits and pieces I've written to various individuals of late, just to keep you
informed. Got your TAFF OFFICIAL yesterday, by the way, and enjoyed it. Of course, there's no
way you're going to escape a Cincinnati response

Oh yeah, could you also remind Ted that he's supposed to forward that copy of my history of
British fandom that I gave him to Marty Cantor when he's finished it. Marty hasn't received
it yet and I really want him to have it so that it can be used to get things right in the new
edition of FANCYCLOPEDIA that he and Mike Glyer are putting together.

Sunday 20th January - Friends In Space

A very pleasant, low-key meeting with me, Greg, Linda, Pam Wells, and (surprisingly)
Sue Hepple. We got it together in the middle bar since someone had filched our usual
corner out back, but then we had access to real ale, so I wasn't complaining, IPA too.

Monday 21st January - final diary entry until mid-March

The drapers at the corner of Redcliffe Road and Green Street (one street over from my flat)
went up in flames this evening and I spent a good three quarters of an hour watching
firemen atop a Simon Snorkel fighting the blaze. There were flames leaping from the roof,
crashing masonry, the whole bit. It was all very impressive.

29th January 1985 - letter to Avedon Carol

To whom it may concern:

The bearer of this letter, Ms Avedon Carol (named in her passport as Ruth
Avedikian) is travelling to the UK on this occasion so that we might be
married. The marriage will occur within three months of her entering the
country and her address during this time, and subsequently, will be as
shown above. I am a British citizen and UK resident (passport number
-redacted -) and am in regular employment.

-- (Avedon, personal letter begins here, cut along crease line) --

My reason for writing this particular letter on an aerogramme is, obviously, so
that you can cut the top bit off and tuck it away in your passport. Since it will
have a postmark and like that on the opposite side it'll be a whole lot more
convincing than a plain typed sheet that anyone anywhere could have knocked up.

It's funny Ted should talk about you getting London fandom to live over there
since Greg suggested, during the TAFF race just past, that British fandom ought
to import the dozen or so US fans we have most contact with so that we could
then totally ignore the rest (since he said this when it looked like Causgrove
and Locke were going to succeed in their campaign I could see where he was coming
from, man). It is kinda odd tho', the number of male fans over here who
have been marrying female fans from over there. In fact I was thinking of writing
a piece on how that great fear of the old pulp SF writers - that aliens would take
the flower of American womanhood - is coming true, only we're not quite the type
of alien they envisaged. If I can think of new words to fit the 'BEM' acronym ('B'
will almost certainly be 'British') I may actually get around to doing the piece
one of these years.

5th February 1985 - letter to Dave Langford

I'm delighted that you'll host our wedding reception in the crumbling magnificence
of your London Road abode since 9A Greenleaf suffers from a singular lack of size,
something I'm sure did not escape your notice when you and Hazel passed through on
the way to Welling last summer. I was thinking in terms of hiring a small local hall,
as Kath & Leroy did, to overcome this obstacle but Avedon wasn't terribly taken with
the idea.

Yeah, it does look like Ted will be coming over for the ceremony, Lucy too (not to
mention Avedon's brother and his wife), so with our local American contingent I've
no doubt it will be a truly transatlantic affair. (Maybe we ought to get spliced
dressed as John Bull and Uncle Sam, but then again maybe we definitely shouldn't.)

David, you ol' gossip-hound you, I know you're dying to spill all in the luridly
loquacious pages of that disreputable scandal-sheet of yours but I'd still prefer
it you held fire on most of this for a while. You may as well mention that we're
getting married, since The Word Is Out and most everyone has probably heard by now,
but don't mention any details until we know just exactly where we are and how it's
all going to go down. Avedon wants either June 15th or 22nd so I'd better get this
special licence and registry office booking arranged PDQ, those being popular dates
and the transatlantic contingent needing a fair bit of forewarning to get their
financial acts together. Again, must chat to you about this on Thursday and then
get it all going. On to other stuff...

I'm including your copy of a TAFFsheet that PNH asked me to distribute. I'll be
handing out lots at the Tun and suggesting that people wishing to discuss TAFF write
letters to Patrick rather than to ETTLE since then the TAFFzine he intends doing
should undercut ETTLE and become the 'official' forum for any discussion. I certainly
won't be writing any letters to ETTLE (but then I didn't write any in response to the
first issue but still ended up appearing in its pages).

Anyway, hope this reaches you before the Tun and I'll see you there.

14th February 1985 - letter to Avedon Carol

Within hours of my writing to you and chortling about 'spring-like, weather the
temperatures plummeted and inside of 48 hrs everything was covered in snow again
and it was fucking freezing. Hell, I've even been cold in bed with all my blankets
and the duvet on top of me, something I've never experienced before. Apparently most
of this is down to the wind-chill factor (while our winters are often cold we rarely
have-high winds at the same time but currently we seem to be being buffetted by gales)
and thanks to this we've been reaching temperatures we haven't hit in 30 years - which
probably explains why I don't remember ever feeling quite this cold. Hell, even those
living in modern centrally-heated houses have been complaining so I suppose this must
really be some freak weather spell.

Got your letter of the 10th this am and was amused that Ted is trying to get you
to talk me into moving over there instead. Since he's very into fannish tradition you
ought to tell him that it's traditional for female American fans marrying British males
to move over here (neglecting to mention Bill & Mary Burns in this context, of course).
So the Gillilands are contemplating coming over as well are they? Good grief! Actually,
with all these Americans possibly coming over I suppose I ought to see if there are any
cons within a week or so of any of the dates we've thought about, to give them the
opportunity to attend if they want to. Oh yeah, my holiday year if from end-of-April to
end-of-April, by the way, so I have no more days left until then but thereafter have
about 21 days or so to play around with.

Greg, since you asked, seems to be talking to most everyone again these days so having
him under the same roof as Joseph & Judith or Malcolm & Chris shouldn't cause any problems.
I like to think that my subtle but constant working away at Greg over his split with so
many people - and one conversation in particular - was what caused him to mend various
bridges but I doubt I'll ever know for sure. Whatever the reason it certainly makes things
a lot less uncomfortable for a lot of people.

17th February 1985 - letter to D West

It's been remarkably quiet on the TAFF front for the last month or so, but I thought
I'd send along one or two items of possible interest. Something I rather wish I could
investigate further is contained in this quote from a recent letter from Avedon:

Peter Toluzzi called me the other night and wanted to know why he wasn't on the list
of TAFF voters.

"I never got a ballot from you - in fact, I'd been wondering why you didn't vote. You
sure you mailed it?"
"I gave it to Rusty when he was collecting ballots at a convention."
"Who'd you vote for?"
"Patrick and Teresa."
"All the ballots they sent in those packages were for Martha Beck."
"Oh."

Hmmm.

Hmmm indeed. A shame there's no may of establishing how many other non-Beck voters
gave their ballots to these people at Midwestern cons.

I also got a letter from Jeanne Gomoll the other day as well. She's co-editor of
feminist fanzine AURORA and helps out with Madison's annual WisCon (a con with
programming slanted towards feminist concerns, apparently), and it turns out that
she's had a few clashes with Causgrove that give the lie to any ideas we might
have had about Midwestern solidarity. From various bits and pieces I've read about
her I'm beginning to form an image of Jackie as being somewhat less than Liberal
and the fact that she refers to WisCon as 'Pervertcon' adds conviction to this
view. She has also "...referred several times (with great disgust) to the group
of Madison 'men-haters..." Food for thought.

Final inclusions are a copy of Patrick's TAFFLUVIA (just in case Simon Ounsley
didn't pass on a copy - and something I hope a lot of people will respond to in
order to wrest the discussion of TAFF matters from ETTLE), and a xerox of the bits
on fandom in the latest SF CHRONICLE. This last leads me to suspect that peace may
soon break out all over (it has been very quiet lately) and to the thought that it
might be A Good Idea to get your piece into print ASAP because if it appears after
peace is widely perceived to have been restored you'll leave yourself open to all
manner of accusations that you're trying to stir things up anew.

Anyway, hope to see the piece soon and look forward to seeing you
again come Easter.